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Theory of Probability and Mathematical Statistics



On the discrepancy of low-dimensional probability measures

Christian Weiss

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Abstract: Calculating the star-discrepancy of a point set in the d-dimensional unit cube with respect to the Lebesgue measure is an NP-hard problem. Still explicit formulas, which allow for an easy implementation, have been derived. These formulas are particularly compact in the case of dimensions d=1,2 by the work of Niederreiter, and Bundschuh and Zhu. In this paper, we generalize their formulas to arbitrary measures in the dimension d=1 and to a wide class of measures in the dimension d=2. In order to give a potential application of such formulas, we reprove from it the fact that the Lebesgue measure is the hardest measure to approximate in the dimension d=1.

Keywords: Star-discrepancy, approximation of measures, discrete measures

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